


pushing petals

by Anonymous



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Flowers, M/M, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Possessive Behavior, Pre-Canon, Sexual Content, Sibling Incest, This Is For You
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 12:58:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17808398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: There is peace in this. He needs not worship, or supplicate himself to unforgiving gods for the deliverance of another. The inexorable press of fingers against his skin is soothing where it steals breath and leaves tribute in turn.Somnus smiles, adoration dripping from the saccharine curve of it, and remarks, “If only the Astrals could see you now, dearest brother. You look positively divine."





	pushing petals

**Author's Note:**

> CHECK! THE! TAGS!  
> just wanted to get that out of the way before you get to reading about SIBLING INCEST AND RATHER QUESTIONABLE BEHAVIORS OF ALL SORTS  
> seriously if you haven't noped out by now and these things ain't your jam, smash that back button and/or close out of this tab!!
> 
> NOW WHAT WE HAVE THAT OUT OF THE WAY have some izunias being Thirsty

Somnus is a terror. Ardyn knows this and should, by all accounts, avoid being pulled into his brother’s particular brand of unmitigated chaos. Of course, he has the good luck of a particularly downtrodden pebble and continually ends up on the wrong side of his steel and wit on a near daily interval. 

It’s flowers, this time, that prove to be his undoing (bushes full of heavy blossoms obscuring wandering hands where they sit, pressed together despite the sultry heat of Lucian summers). Somnus smiles and it’s a mischievous, lopsided thing. Ardyn matches him in kind, thin linen robes slipping off his shoulder when he leans into a searing kiss. The sun beats bright and punishing at his back, but it’s fire is a bare imitation of what Somnus can give. 

“You’re due for a campaign come the dawn,” Ardyn reminds, nearly breathing the words into Somnus’s ear. He knits his fingers into the spaces between his brother’s, knowing he’d not be refused. The closeness is the last they’ll get for a while. There’s a war to wage and people to heal. They have their respective callings and need abide by them.

(But neither of them want to, Somnus least of all. He’d rather tear Ardyn from the bedside of the ailing and throw him back into their own. If he couldn’t have him he would suffer no others to have even the barest chance, no matter how selfish that would be.)

“You needn’t remind me, Ardyn,” he laments. “I’m in no hurry to be apart from you.”

Ardyn laughs, tugging him forward to settle ever closer. “And here I thought you were the fearless general I hear of from bards and brides alike. What a  _ disappointment.” _

“Oh, quiet, you,” Somnus jokingly commands (it’s not like any form of instruction would take when Ardyn shrugs off authority like an ill-fitting coat).

“I refuse.”

He frowns, “I am to be shipped off first thing at dawn and you see fit to call me a disappointment rather than the apotheosis of my current position─”

“As the sole occupant of my lap” Ardyn points out, wiggling his toes in protest. “Speaking of, my legs are going numb. If you could, Brother Dearest─”

“Of course,” Somnus agrees, rising to his feet with ease. The mid-afternoon light is harsh where it sinks into Ardyn’s bronzed skin, reflecting in copper tones off his hair where it’s spilled from its tie. Somnus feels a flare of dreadful, egotistical envy at the sight. 

He’s be taken from this (from all that Ardyn is and works to be) for months on end, left to watch troops crumple at the hands of their adversaries in pursuit of safety for those he leaves behind. Where Ardyn would presumably get wrapped up in tomes and tending to the smallfolk, his guaranteed safety was of no comfort when somnus considered the cost. He has a bodyguard for a reason─not all of their country are receptive to being driven by the will of the Astrals─and it’s only by his purposeful interference that Ardyn remains among the living. For someone so beloved by the  _ literal gods of Eos,  _ it’s a wonder he’s not been snatched up to sit among the clouds and hang the sun in the sky every morning. He’s ethereal and selflessly indulgent where he weaves magic into every centimeter of his work like it’s plentiful as air. 

Somnus knows the price for such a gift. He’s seen the fatigue pulling grey hairs through the spectrum of red that is Ardyn’s hair. He’s seen the fatigue in his eyes and his shoulders and his  _ hands ( _ Gods, those hands. Calloused and gentle where he examines patients to clean wounds and proffer potions). They never shake when he’s weaving stitches or snapping bones back into place. They do afterwards, when the pulses of manic energy have run their course and left him feeling sick from tip to toe.

He does not deserve to suffer so. 

It’s an irrational thought─that of his ability to somehow stop his brother from bleeding himself dry just by virtue of being near enough to stop it─and one that rises unbidden to the forefront of his mind. Ardyn blinks against the sun to stare up at him and asks, “Is something the matter? Worry is not your best look.”

“It’s nothing,” he responds. “Truly.”

“Come now, where is your rapier wit?”

Somnus raises one well manicured eyebrow and remarks, “With all due respect, Cardinal Izunia, kindly fuck off.”

Ardyn cackles, grinning wide enough for it to become wolfish. “Ah, there it is! I was wondering if I’d dulled the blade.” He shakes out his legs, standing only  _ after  _ adjusting the length of his summer robes to ensure his modesty would be preserved at large (not that Somnus was not  _ very much aware  _ of every particular treasure the billowing fabric obscured). “Do me a favor and perform ablutions before putting that mouth on me again. I’d not be sullied by your uncouth tongue.”

“Ah, yes,” Somnus intones, taking his hand to begin the walk out of the gardens, “the tongue that makes you speak much the same as I.” 

“I am devout as Shiva herself is to Ifrit,” Ardyn protests. “I would  _ never─” _

They cut by Gilgamesh, hulking (handsome) shadow he never fails to be, as Somnus takes great pains to recount the  _ exact phrasing  _ of the curses Ardyn had spouted the moment Somnus had taken him into his mouth. There’s a flush more lurid than blood at his brother’s cheeks that spills down his chest and out to the ears when Gilgamesh cuts from the wall to follow behind them. 

He knows this game. It’s always purposeful─Somnus is no bumbling fool unwary enough to allow such a slip─and never any less mortifying. 

(Yes, they may have worked their way through the initial laundry list of unadvisable places to fuck. No, Ardyn is not any more comfortable hiking up his clergy uniform for sex as Somnus is hiding among them inside a confessional.)

Gilgamesh’s voice is a rumble when he asks, “And your faithful know you pray with such a mouth?”

Somnus smiles at him and it’s threateningly coy. “Why, have you taken an interest?” He allows his hand to smooth up Ardyn’s arm and over to the side of his hip. 

“Perhaps,” Gilgamesh replies with half a shrug, “bit it is not my business to insinuate, or entertain the thought.”

Ardyn chances a match to Somnus’s expression, leaning on him and dropping one shoulder to let his sleeve slip clean off and nearly down to his elbow. “We could always make it your business, if you so choose.” He watches with carefully restrained hunger as Gilgamesh adjusts his mask (the damned thing), hoping against all hope that he’d just  _ remove it _ . “We’d be delighted to have you.”

Somnus snorts at his brother’s choice of wording and agrees, “I feel that is the understatement of this entire  _ era.” _

“I, unlike you, have morals and a basic level of decorum I care to uphold,” Ardyn quips in reply. “I care not to rehash the disaster that was you attempting to lie to mother over that disaster of sibling portraiture.”

Somnus’s expression only grows ever more worrisome as they near the high arches of the residential wing. Ardyn is a good two seconds away from bolting to lock himself into his quarters to avoid the inevitable maelstrom that will be Somnus’s attempt at securing the railing of a lifetime for the both of them when Gilgamesh remarks, “Ah. Was that the day you both took the entirety of a session with the House sculptor to make eyes at each other?”

“It was mostly at you, but yes,” Somnus admits easily. “Will you grant us your company?”

“Always, my lord.”


End file.
